straightened, listening to the staccato rattle of musketry at the bluff’s summit, which told him that some redcoats must still be fighting on the heights. “We’ll need to bring artillery ashore, Colonel,” he said to Revere.
“Soon as you release us, General,” Revere said. There was an edge of resentment in his voice, suggesting that he thought it demeaning for his men to carry muskets instead of serving cannons. “Just as soon as you release us,” he said again, though more willingly this time.
“Let’s first see what we’ve achieved,” Lovell said. He patted the blinded man’s shoulder a second time and started up the bluff, hauling himself on saplings. “It’ll be a hard job to get cannon up this slope, Colonel.”
“We’ll manage that,” Revere said confidently. Taking heavy artillery up a bluff’s steep face was a practical problem, and Lieutenant-Colonel Revere liked overcoming such challenges.
“I never did congratulate you on the success of your gunners at Cross Island,” Lovell said. “You’ve hurt the enemy ships! A splendid achievement, Colonel.”
“Just doing our duty, General,” Revere said, but pleased all the same at the compliment. “We killed some damned Britons!” He went on happily. “I’ve dreamed of killing the damned beasts!”
“And you drove the enemy’s ships back! So now there’s nothing to stop our fleet from entering the harbor.”
“Nothing at all, General,” Revere agreed.
The stutter of musketry still sounded from Lovell’s right, evidence that some redcoats yet remained on the high ground above the bay, but it was clear that most of the enemy had retreated because, as Lovell reached the easier slope at the top of the bluff, he found grinning militiamen who gave him a cheer. “We beat them, sir!”
“Of course we beat them,” Lovell said, beaming, “and all of you,” he raised his voice and lifted his hands in a gesture of benediction, “all of you have my thanks and my congratulations on this magnificent feat of arms!”
The woods at the top of the bluff were now in rebel hands, all but for a stand of pines above Dyce’s Head, which was far to the general’s right and from where the musketry still sounded. Lovell’s militia were thick in the woods. They had climbed the precipitous slope, they had taken casualties, but they had shot the British off the summit and all the way back to the fort. Men looked happy. They talked excitedly, recounting incidents in the fight up the steep slope, and Lovell enjoyed their happiness. “Well done!” he said again and again.
He went to the edge of the trees and there, in front of him, was the enemy. The fog had quite gone now and he could see every detail of the fort that lay only half a mile to the east. The enemy had made a screen of branches between the woods and the fort, but from his high ground Lovell could easily see over that flimsy barricade and he could see that Fort George did not look like a stronghold at all, but instead resembled an earthen scar in the ridge’s soil. The nearest rampart was thickly lined with redcoats, but he still felt relief. The fort, which in Lovell’s imagination had been a daunting prospect of stone walls and sheer ramparts, now proved to be a mere scratch in the dirt.
Colonel McCobb of the Lincoln County militia hailed the general cheerfully. “A good morning’s work, sir!”
“One for the history books, McCobb! Without doubt, one for the history books!” Lovell said. “But not quite done yet. I think, don’t you, that we should keep going?”
“Why not, sir?” McCobb answered.
Solomon Lovell’s heart seemed to miss a beat. He scarcely dared believe the speed and extent of the morning’s victory, but the sight of those distant redcoats behind the low rampart told him that the victory was not yet complete. He had a vision of the redcoats’ muskets flaring volleys at his men. “Is General Wadsworth here?”
“He was, sir.” McCobb said Wadsworth had been at the wood’s edge where he had encouraged Colonel McCobb and Colonel Mitchell to keep their militiamen moving forward onto the cleared land, but both colonels had pleaded they needed time to reorganize their troops. Units had become scattered as they clambered up the bluff and the necessity of carrying the wounded back to the beach meant that most companies were shorthanded. Besides, the capture of the high woods had seemed like a victory in itself and men wanted to savor that triumph before they advanced on Fort George. Peleg Wadsworth had urged haste, but then had been distracted by the musket-fire which still filled the trees at Dyce’s Head with smoke. “I believe he went to the right.” McCobb continued, “to the marines.”
“The marines are still fighting?” Lovell asked McCobb.
“A few stubborn bastards are holding out there,” McCobb said.
Lovell hesitated, but the sight of the enemy’s flags tipped his indecision towards confidence. “We shall advance to victory!” he announced cheerfully. He wanted to add those arrogant enemy flags to his trophies. “Form your fine fellows into line,” he told McCobb, then plucked at the colonel’s sleeve as another doubt flickered in his mind. “Have the enemy fired on you? With cannon, I mean?”
“Not a shot, General.”
“Well, let’s stir your men from the woods! Tell them they’ll be eating British beef for their suppers!” The musketry from Dyce’s Head suddenly intensified into an angry and concentrated crackle, and then, just as suddenly, went silent. Lovell stared towards the smoke, the only visible evidence of whatever battle was being fought among those trees. “We should tell the marines we’re advancing,” he said. “Major Brown? Would you convey that message to Captain Welch? Tell him to advance with us as soon as he’s ready?”
“I will, sir,” Major Gawen Brown, the second of Lovell’s brigade majors, started off southwards.
Lovell could not stop smiling. The Massachusetts Militia had taken the bluff! They had climbed the precipitous slope, they had fought the regulars of the British Army, and they had conquered. “I do believe,” he said to Lieutenant-Colonel Revere, “that we may not need your cannon after all! Not if we can drive the enemy out of their works with infantry.”
“I’d still like a chance to hammer them,” Revere said. He was staring at the fort and was not impressed by what he saw. The curtain wall was low and its flanking bastions were unfinished, and he reckoned his artillery could reduce that feeble excuse for a fort into a smear of bloodied dirt.
“You zeal does you credit,” Lovell said, “indeed it does, Colonel.” Behind him the militia sergeants and officers were rousting men from among the trees and shouting at them to form line on the open ground. The flags of Massachusetts and of the United States of America flew above them and it was time for the decisive assault.
Lieutenant Moore heard the bellowed order to charge and saw the green-uniformed men erupt out of the trees and he was aware of muskets flaming unexpectedly from his left and the chaos of the moment overwhelmed him. There was only terror in his head. He opened his mouth to shout an order, but no words came, and a hugely tall rebel in a green coat crossed by white belts, and with a long black pigtail flapping behind his neck, and with a cutlass catching the morning sun in his right hand was running straight towards him and John Moore, almost without thinking, raised the musket he had rescued from Private McPhail and his finger fumbled at the trigger, and then he realized he had not even loaded or cocked the musket, but it was too late because the big rebel was almost on him and the man’s face was a savagely frightening grimace of hatred and Moore convulsively pulled the trigger anyway and the musket fired.
It had been cocked and loaded and Moore had never noticed.
The ball took the rebel under the chin, it seared up through his mouth and out through his skull, lifting his hat into the air. The shock wave of the ball, compressed by the skull, drove an eye from its socket. Blood misted, blurring red in fine droplets as the rebel, dead in an instant, fell forward onto his knees. The cutlass dropped and the man’s dead arms wrapped themselves round Moore’s waist and then slid slowly down to his feet. Moore, aghast, noticed that the pigtail was dripping blood.
“For God’s sake, young Moore, you want to win this bloody war single-handed?” Major Dunlop greeted the young lieutenant. Dunlop’s men had fired a company volley from the trees to Moore’s left, and that sudden volley had served to drive the momentarily outnumbered marines back to the trees.
Moore could not speak. A musket-ball plucked at the tails of his coat. He was gazing down at the dead rebel whose head was a mess of blood, red-wet hair, and scraps of bone.
“Come on, lad,” Dunlop took Moore’s elbow, “let’s get the devil out of here.”
The company retreated, taking Moore’s surviving men with them. They withdrew along the lower ground beside the harbor as the American marines captured the three naval cannon abandoned on Dyce’s Head. The rebel battery was firing from Cross Island, relentlessly thumping round shot into Captain Mowat’s ships. The crest of the bluff was thick with rebels and the redcoats had no place to go now except the unfinished Fort George.
And Captain John Welch was dead.
It took time to fetch the militia from the trees, but gradually they were formed into a line. It was a rough line
